Human Rights Education in Bulgarian Primary School

Abstract: The Master thesis is structured in four parts: Part A International sources - This part examines the international instruments that have had biggest impact on the development of human rights education. It gives an idea about the contents of the right to human rights education and of the respective obligations of the states. It also gives prominence to the crucial role, reiterated in these instruments, of the constant reviewing of the school curriculum and textbooks. Given that today examination of state reports is the most effective method available to international organizations to monitor the implementation of the right to human rights education, this chapter also includes two reports of the Republic of Bulgaria on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Framework Convention of National Minorities and the opinions of the respective monitoring bodies. Finally, the chapter analyses the goals and objectives of the Plan of Action for the UN Decade for Human Rights Education, including their realization in Bulgaria. Part B Domestic law - This part lists the Bulgarian acts and regulations that guarantee the right to human rights education for every Bulgarian child at all school levels. It further examines the implementation of this legislation by the competent executive body: the Ministry of Education and Science. More specifically, the paper comments on the recently adopted Strategy for Educational Integration of Children and Schoolchildren from Ethnic Minorities in Bulgaria, as well as on the curriculum approved for the academic year 2006/2007. Part C Textbooks - The main part of the Master Thesis anlyses the contents of some Bulgarian textbooks for first, second and third grade. These are the textbooks approved for this academic year on the subjects ''Bulgarian language and Literature'', ''Home land'', ''World around'' and ''Man and society''. These are the only subjects in Bulgarian curriculum for primary stage of education that include human rights lessons and messages. The curriculum does not include ''Human rights'' as a separate subject. The chapter compares the content of the textbooks in the same subject written by different authors (the Ministry of Education and Science approves minimum three textbooks of different authors for every subject) and their level of compliance with the international and domestic standards for human rights education. Finally, the paper distinguishes ''the favourite'' in each subject and examines its real application through a statistic of the number of students in Sofia city that are tauth in each one of the approved textbooks in the same subject. Part D Survey - The last part of the paper resumes the results of a survey I have conducted in 12 schools in Sofia. I have prepared three types of questionnaires for teachers in, respectively, first, second and third grade. I have asked them to indicated which of the approved textbooks in ''Bulgarian language and Literature'', ''Home land'', ''World around'' and ''Man and society'' have chosen to teach for the academic 2006/2007. More importantly, I have asked them to state their main arguments in favour of their choice or why did they prefer this particular textbook to the others in the same subject.